Spooning Leads to Forking (Hot in the Kitchen Book 2)

by Kilby Blades

  Shea tried not to roll her eyes when she recognized it for the pickup attempt it was. She wished for something clever to say to show this fool how not impressed she was by his money.

  “Yeah.” She smiled too sweetly. “I’m sure.”

  9

  The Special Order

  Dev

  Dev didn't mind Thursdays at, even though it was the busiest day at the market. Even though he had to pull double duty, with Silvio cheating him more and more each week. It wasn’t much—probably one-sided and something he took too seriously for his own good. Still, Thursday was one of the days he always got to see Shea.

  It had become somewhat of a game to him: speculating on what she would cook with all of the odd ingredients she picked up on random days at the market and took the time to special order from him. Who came to the grocery store for a bunch of watercress, three stalks of fresh fennel, a gallon of milk and nothing more? Either she drove 40 miles each week to Big Mart to get the rest of her groceries—and Dev was pretty sure the kind of stuff Big Mart sold didn’t pair well with watercress—or she was one of the oddest and most interesting people Dev had ever met.

  And it wasn’t just her culinary quirks that charmed him beyond reason. He loved that she hummed along to Stevie while she shopped—vibrant and so on key, he was sure she had an amazing singing voice. She stopped and read labels before choosing her food and took a slow zigzag down every aisle. Not enough people cared what they put into their bodies, but Shea seemed thoughtful about it—organized and particular, too. She appreciated the free samples of random health foods he put near the front of the store and thanked him every time. And she only ever paid for her purchases in cash.

  “Oh, no! Am I too early?”

  From his position in the back of the store, Dev hadn’t heard the bell announcing a customer’s entry. And from his vantage point, Dev hadn’t seen her come in. The boxes from the delivery were stacked so high and he’d been so distracted by Silvio that he hadn’t seen her approach.

  Dev really liked looking at her, but he tried not to be a creeper as he took in today’s outfit: dark jean short cutoffs, brown leather cowboy boots and a light gray summer sweater that looked as soft as a baby bunny’s pelt.

  “I don’t know.” Dev swung his gaze to his vendor “It depends on Silvio here. Are you done cheating me for today?”

  Dev had already been around to the restaurant, taking inventory on ingredients delivered from Silvio on the food order that morning. It felt like everything cost an arm and a leg.

  “You want the cheap stuff, I’ll bring you the cheap stuff…” Silvio volleyed back with a shit-eating grin. “No one’s holding a gun to your head to stock GMO-free bone broth and organic chard. Pricing would be better if you ordered regular food.”

  “Pricing would be better if you told your other customers to stop ordering crap. We’d all be able to afford the better stuff if we ordered at volume.”

  The back-and-forth was one the men had engaged in many times. Dev turned his attention back to Shea. He had hoped she would show up a little later, when she could have his undivided attention.

  “It’ll take me a minute, but I can find your order if you want to wait,” he offered.

  Fortunately, his business with Silvio was nearly done.

  “I’ll wait,” she agreed amicably. It felt like the little smile she threw Dev held something just for him. Dev threw his own smile back that held something just for her. Then he remembered that Silvio was there, that he had a job to do and that the rest of the world existed.

  “Help yourself to bone broth in the warmer up front.”

  As Dev said the words “bone broth,” he shifted his gaze back to Silvio and gave him a little eyebrow raise. Silvio just shook his head, grabbed his clipboard off of one of the boxes he’d just delivered and started toward the back door. Dev turned his attention back to his own clipboard and plucked out the check he’d printed out before Silvio had arrived. He quickly signed the slip that verified everything had been inspected and received.

  “Be good,” Silvio said in parting, angling his head in the direction Shea had gone to retreat toward the front. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Either Dev had been that obvious or Shea was that hot. It was definitely some of the latter and probably some of the former considering the knowing look Silvio gave. Heckling notwithstanding, Dev liked Silvio. He was a little guy who did business with other little guys.

  After he’d closed up the loading dock, Dev locked the back door and made his way back up to the front. “I don’t talk to everyone like that,” he said honestly to Shea. “I save my worst for people I know. He and I go way back. Along those lines, I apologize in advance for what your bill’s gonna look like.” Dev glanced down briefly at his clipboard before resting it on the table that held the broth. “You won’t believe what he charged me for the sumac.”

  “Really—it’s okay,” she said with a polite smile. She had just dispensed a steaming cup of broth. “I’m used to paying much more in the city.”

  Dev had heard she was from New York, though they’d never discussed this personally. If he’d had to wager a guess, New York wouldn’t have been it. Last he’d checked, New Yorkers still had accents, wore a lot of stern facial expressions and head-to-toe black. Shea seemed vibrant and bursting with color. It made him wonder where she was really from; if he had to put her in a city, he could picture her in Berlin or Paris.

  “You enjoy your broth, and I’ll bring you your things.”

  Free samples added to the store’s expenses, but people seemed to appreciate them and Dev liked to offer his customers healthy things. Bone broth was nutrient-rich, joint-protective and it helped with nighttime sleep. Getting people around here to eat better was the whole reason why Dev had bothered to open a health-focused grocery as part of the restoration. Health was priority number one.

  It didn’t take him long to find her order: sumac and Humboldt fog cheese along with a few not-cheap bottles of wine. And it seemed he had finally gotten in the small bottle of pumpkin seed oil she’d requested three weeks back. He’d had to track it down to a place in Connecticut, from some sort of Austrian imports specialty store.

  “How’s the broth?” Dev asked as he made his way back to the front, walking more slowly than he strictly needed to. She held a steaming cup in her right hand but seem to be inspecting the table around the urn. She shifted a pile of napkins then craned her neck to see the spaces to the left and the right, for what, he didn’t know.

  Her brow knit from behind her glasses. Today the color was yellowish-green—a chartreuse that flattered her.

  “Do you happen to have any salt?” she asked.

  “No. But I can take some out of inventory.”

  Dev quelled the urge to mention the link between salt and high blood pressure—a link of which he was sure Shea was aware. It turned out, wanting everyone to be healthy and seeming patronizing while he was doing it had a finer dividing line than he realized. He’d gotten an earful from his sister once or twice—accusations of mansplaining.

  “Oh! I didn’t mean for you to have to do that. I thought maybe you had the little packets. Never mind. It’s not a big deal.”

  “I insist.” He waved her to follow him to the aisle that held the spices, anticipating already that this would be fun. “Is there any special kind of salt you would prefer?”

  He asked the question with humor in his voice. His unmasked amusement was as good as saying it out loud. It was understood between them that her special requests were odd enough to have earned her a reputation as someone finicky but fun.

  It followed, therefore, that she returned her own little look, raising her chin in indignation and pride. It was subtle, but very cute.

  “Now that you ask…” she baited, “…a medium gray sea salt would be best. Much better for you than table salt and some of the mineral properties keep blood pressure in check.”

  “Gray salt it is.” Dev was still smiling a
s he located the brand he had in mind and plucked it off the shelf, then held it out for her to take. He angled his head to the kitchen wares aisle. He knew exactly where to look and made a beeline for a small bamboo box that was shaped like a cylinder. It had a lid that pivoted on a single point and slid sideways off of the box.

  “Will this do?” He demonstrated the motion of the box.

  He really liked it when she blushed. Her skin was the color of mid-coast eucalyptus trees when you peeled back the bark: light brown with undertones of butter cream. But it wasn’t so deep with pigment that you couldn’t see her flush.

  “You know what else is good in bone broth?” she asked instead of answering. He liked how close they were standing and raised an eyebrow to invite her response. “Chives. They really bring out the flavor.”

  He could have easily marched them to the produce section. Instead, he decided to dig for information.

  “I take it you’re a chef?” The theory didn’t fit given the common knowledge she was some sort of writer, but she’d given him an opening and it was high time he asked.

  “Me?” She seemed so surprised by the theory, she took a step back and issued a fast, “Oh, no.”

  “Can I ask a question then?” He crossed his arms in front of him. “What the hell does someone who’s not a chef need sumac and pumpkin seed oil for?”

  He threw his best disarming smile. It only made her blush more.

  “Well … I don’t really use them to cook from scratch. I need them to add to the dishes I eat when I order out.”

  “You use them to—” He cut himself off, shocked, confused and unable to think of an intelligent response.

  “I mean, the food’s not bad…” she hedged. “It’s just … some of the dishes need a little something more.”

  Dev took another few seconds to process all of this.

  “So you don’t cook…” he trailed off slowly.

  She shook her head, visibly self-conscious now. “No. Not really.”

  “But you take food someone else already cooked and make it better…” he concluded.

  She shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “And that’s why you had me scour half the state looking for sumac, because you wanted to fix your food.”

  “Where the food is fixable, yes.” She seemed to say it as politely as she could.

  “But sometimes it isn’t,” he prodded. She just sort of shrugged and shook her head.

  “What do you think of the food at The Big Spoon?” he quizzed.

  Since this was a small town and she might know he owned the place, his shot at an honest answer might be zero.

  “The desserts are really good,” she offered. “I really like the coffee cake.”

  Dev quelled the impulse to ask whether she liked it better before or after she added her own twist.

  “So what, exactly, do you fix?”

  Shea shrugged, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Soups. Salads. Anything that can be improved. A lot of times, I can taste what’s wrong and figure out what it needs. Either that, or just rethink the proportions.”

  Dev just blinked back at her, never having imagined that any one person could be this intriguing. More than before, he wanted to know everything there was to be known about her.

  “And something from one of the restaurants in town needs sumac?” He knew she wanted salt and chives for her broth, but he couldn’t seem to stop asking her questions.

  “The aioli for the fried oysters at The Big Spoon is a little flat. The acidic flavor of the sumac will kick it up.”

  An idea entered Dev’s head then—a crazy one that he had no idea whether she’d adopt because, technically, she didn’t know him very well. But it was such a great idea that his mouth ran ahead of his caution.

  “I could really use you over at The Big Spoon.”

  The expression on her face—what might have been annoyance at having been put on the spot—turned to confusion. “Wait … you work at The Big Spoon?”

  This next part, Dev didn’t like saying out loud. It still wasn’t comfortable for him to admit that technically, he owned a good quarter of all the businesses in town.

  It was mostly for the purpose of reviving them—buying them up so they wouldn’t go to outside developers or foreclosure to the bank. He wasn’t quite ready to share that fact with Shea.

  “My sister does,” he hedged. “She’s the part-time head chef.”

  Shea narrowed her eyes and threw him a suspicious look. “Head chefs aren’t supposed to be part time.”

  “The Big Spoon’s her second job and she’s just filling in. She manages another restaurant, too. She’s been kind of struggling to make the menu over there work.”

  Dev knew the explanation was cryptic and vague; from the look on her face, so did Shea. But it really was a longer story.

  “There was a guy named Carl Jenkins—the guy who built The Big Spoon. The man was an icon in this town. You wouldn’t know it now, but The Spoon used to be a real destination. Every night, the place was packed. It had a real magic about it—it was a place where people came together.”

  Shea looked like she knew what was coming so Dev didn’t beat around the bush. “About a year ago, he died. His wife went three months after him. Everyone’s tried to recreate his recipes, but the food hasn’t been the same. I’m asking because of your talent. I can’t say I understand how you do what you do, but it sounds like you have the kind of taste buds that can help.”

  “I don’t know…” Shea looked apprehensive. “I mean—I’m sure I can make them better. But, without having tasted his cooking, there’s no way I could make them taste like his.”

  Dev didn’t want to sound pushy—more like, not too proud to beg.

  “We did find a recipe book. Only, it’s disorganized and incomplete and we don’t understand all of the proportions.”

  The deer-in-the-headlights look on her face wasn’t very encouraging, though the shame was Dev’s—he didn’t feel good about practically cornering the poor woman. He’d do well to remember that she was a customer—quirky talent or not—on an innocent visit to the grocery store.

  “Look,” he relented. “I know you barely know me and I’m really sorry to ask you like this. If the answer is no, it’s no. But if you’d even consider it, my sister could use your help.”

  10

  The Tasting

  Shea

  This is not a date. This is not a date. Going to dinner with a hot guy does not make it a date.

  Shea hadn’t needed to remind herself of this fact on any of the occasions she’d called on friends to accompany her to a restaurant she planned to review. Technically, the dinner Dev had invited her to at The Big Spoon was business. But the fact that she was agonizing over her outfit and had deep-conditioned her hair proved otherwise. So did rifling through her makeup drawer until she found the gloss that made her lips more fabulous than they already were. So did spending twenty minutes choosing the perfect pair of glasses.

  Pink was too cutesy and too daytime, even though the color really flattered her skin. Teal was usually a good bet, but the color on her hair was a bright royal. Blue hair limited anything too green and anything too red, for that matter. She didn’t want to look like the Fourth of July. White would send the wrong message and she’d stay away from her silvers. Sapling wasn’t ready to see her in metallic tones. It felt a bit boring and predictable, but she decided to go with plum.

  He’s not gonna care about your glasses because this isn’t a date. Why can’t you get it through your head?

  It was never good when she talked to herself. Even worse was when she met talking to herself with answering herself.

  Because when the chemistry’s that natural, that’s how it’s gonna feel.

  The answering voice in her head wasn’t wrong. That was why Shea planned to give his sister some one-time free advice, then politely decline. She would talk about the screenplay she was writing and all she needed to accomplish while she was in Sapling. She
would suggest in the kindest terms possible that his sister recruit a capable chef. And she absolutely would not in any way, shape or form be bewitched by Dev’s forest-green eyes.

  “Hey, thanks for coming.” She recognized his baritone from directly behind her over the restaurant’s dull roar. Shea had yet to eat at The Big Spoon on a Friday night. There were only two tables left.

  As she turned to face him, she caught a whiff of his scent—all cedar and citrus and musk. The mix of aromas was appealing all on its own. Things got real when her body completed its motion and she fully took him in. After-work Dev was absolutely gorgeous.

  She’d thought it couldn’t get sexier than his uniform of aprons and fitted tees that invited her eyes to crawl over his chiseled arms. What he had on now showed her, she’d thought wrong. His slim-fitting button-up was a stylish plaid that mixed reds and browns and pinks. Its rolled-up sleeves accentuated forearms that were corded and strong. His jeans were different than the ones he usually wore—these ones had a darker wash and a tighter cut that added to his rugged appeal.

  “Oh, hey…” she said, trying to sound like she didn’t want to touch his middle and run her fingers over his shirt. Something about the cut of his outfit made her really want to see his abs. Until then, she hadn’t given much thought to what his midsection might be like. Something told her his abs were magnificent.

  “I really appreciate you doing this,” he said clapping his hands together and giving her a grateful, sincere look. He motioned forward, toward the busy restaurant floor. A second later, he put his hand on the small of her back and began to weave her around the tables until they came to one by the window. The evening was cool and no one was sitting outside.

  “What do you like to drink?” he asked as soon as they sat down.

  “Something with Bourbon and citrus and sweet.”

  His lips melted into a smirk. “Shit. I’m scared of you...”

  “How ‘bout you?” she returned.